Minister emphasised the effects of 2022 nationwide floods brought on by heavy rains, which affected 33 mln people across 94 districts & caused displacement of 2 million households.
The government is committed to implementing socio-economic reforms, according to the federal minister for planning, development, and special initiatives, and agriculture is one of the key sectors that needs to be outfitted with cutting-edge technology to increase production through smart agriculture practices.
The minister told the visiting US delegates who visited him here on Thursday that improving productivity was one of the government’s top priorities in order to prevent food inflation as well as to establish a value chain, according to a press release. Smart agriculture practices used to optimize agricultural production while minimizing environmental impact
The delegation was led by Derek Chollet, a counsellor for the US Department of State. The meeting also included Donald Blome, the US ambassador to Pakistan. Our inability to maintain a balance of payments was, according to the minister, largely due to our reliance on imports while ignoring the export sector.
The only way to make money, build up foreign reserves, and maintain the balance of payments, he claimed, was through industrial and corporate sectors orienting away from domestic markets and towards international ones.
Similarly, he continued, the government was putting special emphasis on boosting IT exports because the youth, who make up nearly two-thirds of our population, were crucial in helping Pakistan become the third-largest country in the world for freelancing.
The minister emphasised that Pakistani youth had greater potential and seamless talent in almost all fields, and there were abundant opportunities for US businesses to work with Pakistani companies, which provide services that are comparably less expensive than those offered by India and other nations.
According to him, Pakistan had been working hard for a long time to transform from a security state to an economic state, and the CPEC was a major factor in this transformation when the world began considering Pakistan as a location for investments.
At the same time, he continued, Pakistan launched the US-Pak Knowledge Corridor in partnership with the United States, which represented a paradigm shift in our long-standing strategic alliance and the development of human resources.” Pakistan’s main goal was to train 10,000 PhDs from the best US universities over the next ten years.”
The government’s determination to give Pakistan a soft identity and its emphasis on enhancing the economic, energy, education, health, food, and agricultural sectors were both praised by the US delegates. The delegation decided to create an institutional framework and structure for cooperation and communication across various sectors.
The minister emphasised the effects of the 2022 nationwide floods brought on by heavy rains, which affected 33 million people across 94 districts and caused the displacement of 2 million households.
He stated that the Resilient, Rehabilitation, Reconstruction, and Recovery Framework (4RF) was being used by the government of Pakistan to develop both short- and long-term plans for the planning, financing, implementation, and monitoring of recovery and reconstruction in the affected areas.
Pakistan was also developing a 10-year plan to improve its national flood protection strategy and implement climate change adaptation measures.
The minister affirmed that the government was concentrating on getting the economy back on track by developing the frameworks for the short to medium term to recover from the ongoing crunch. Pakistan, he said, had been facing numerous socio-politico-economic challenges. Through smart agriculture practices, farmers can increase their production while reducing their impact on the environment.
For this reason, e-Pakistan, which is based on the power of contemporary IT-based technologies and systems, the environment, energy, and equity are the five key thematic areas that comprise the exports’ leading growth.